Republican Party elites are beginning to warm to the idea of Donald Trump as their presidential nominee, including some establishment figures who just months ago were painting it as a harbinger of doom for the GOP.

'I think he could change the electoral map in ways we haven't seen before,' Texas Sen. John Cornyn said hopefully on Thursday.

Cornyn had previously predicted that a Trump nomination would be an 'albatross' around the party's neck, generating Democratic turnout numbers large enough to crush Republican congressional candidates.

TOLD YOU SO: Trump has claimed on the campaign trail that establishment Republicans will come out of the woodwork to support him, and the first trickle of a flood appears to be forming

DON'T FREAK OUT: Texas Sen. John Cornyn said GOP elites 'don't need to despair' about a Trump nomination dragging the Republican Party down in November

'This disrupts the usual Republican vs. Democrat, conservative vs. liberal paradigm, and I think we don't know how this will all play out. I think it will be OK,' he said, laughing: 'You don't need to despair.'

Trump said Tuesday night after his five-state primary sweep that Republicans who have publicly disparaged him are now calling and asking 'if they can join our team.'

'I'm a unifier. I unify people,' he claimed.

'We will have people that are backing this party and backing my candidacy that you folks will not even believe,' he told reporters gathered at Trump Tower in New York City.

'We will have such unity. Now, I'm not saying everybody. Because some people have gone over the edge. But we will have people backing the party and backing [me for] the presidency. And we're going to win, and we're going to beat Hillary Clinton. And it's not even going to be hard.'

Many of the Johnny-come-latelies are Ted Cruz supporters, but with his campaign struggling and Trump's skating to the finish line, they've come around.

'Many of us who have expressed concerns are reconciling ourselves to the fact that in all likelihood he will be the eventual nominee,' South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, a Cruz partisan, told CNN.

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Even those lawmakers on Trump's right flank who aren't embracing him say they're keeping their powder dry because they don't want to alienate voters who have.

While many conservatives aren't ready to publicly endorse Trump, some privately admit that they don't want to criticize him and antagonize his supporters, whom they will need to turn out in November to retain control of Congress.

Backing Trump 'is a way to give Congress and the Republican Party the middle finger,' Idaho Rep. Raul Labrador told reporters on Wednesday.

Labrador is a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. He endorsed Cruz after initially acting as a campaign surrogate for Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.

For every Trump convert on Capitol Hill, though, there seems to be an equal and opposite member of Congress who is stubbornly calling the Trump train a train wreck.

NOT SO SURE: Rep. Raul Labrador of Idaho (left) sees Trump's broad support as a 'middle finger' to the Washington establishment, while South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham insists the party will get shallacked in November with Trump as its standard bearer

'If he's the nominee, we get creamed,' said South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a former presidential candidate who now backs Cruz.

'We're going to get killed with women and Hispanics. It's going to be a wipeout.'

But Graham acknowledges that if Trump wins Indiana, the next winner-take-all primary state, 'it's over' and Cruz will be sent home packing.

Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, another Cruz supporter, said he can't support Trump in the general election.

'Some of his ideas are fine,' Amash said. 'Others are terrible.'

But Minnesota Rep. John Kline seemed resigned to the idea of a brash billionaire leading the charge in November.

'Certainly his tone, I find annoying to the very least,' he told CNN. 'He's not my choice, but I'm going to support the nominee.